Paging Dr. Dolittle

Recently, a co-worker of mine referred to me as Dr. Dolittle due to the fact that I now have two cats and an ornate box turtle living at my house. The surname struck me as hyperbolic, hardly warranted by the stewardship of merely three animals from two species. The title, strangely enough, has been more applicable of late given the health problems of our pets. To treat newcomer Claudio's eye infection, I have to put a gunky medication on his eyes 3x daily. Have you ever had to put something on a cat's eyeball? Granted it's nothing compared to making a cat swallow any form of medication, but it's still no picnic.

Then there's the turtle. Agamemnon, aka Turtle (Side note: why are receptionists so confused by the name Agamemnon? Haven't they read the Iliad, or at least seen Troy? And as for not being able to spell or pronounce it, WTF? It's completely phonetic! If you can read, you can pronounce it. If you hear, you can spell it. What is the problem?), hasn't been eating lately due to a bacterial infection. This means I have to give him shots. How hard is it to give a shot to a turtle; he can't run away, you might say (annoyingly, if I might add). Well, I'll tell you. The main difficulty is that you have to pull his arm out of his shell in order to inject him in his armpit. This means wrestling open his plastron (the hinged part that lets him close himself up like a box), avoiding being bitten by a now-angry box turtle, getting a grip on a tiny little turtle paw, and wrenching it out. If that sounds easy to you, feel free to drop by my house in the next week; I've got eight more shots to give him.

Note: Add me to the impressive list of people who misspell "Dolittle." Personally, I blame the Pixies.